Two kinds of count nouns

Hana Filip (Universität Düsseldorf),
28.11.2017,
16:00

There is a class of Ns that are grammatically count such as fence,
wall,
twig, that are non-quantized like bona fide singular count Ns (cat) but
also not cumulative like mass Ns (mud, water). Furthermore, puzzlingly,
many of these Ns are felicitous in pseudo-partitive, measure NPs: Thick
woolen drapes of red and gold covered every inch of wall (COCA). We
address this puzzle, which, to our knowledge, has so far not been
noticed in contemporary mass/count debates in formal semantics. We
argue that fence-like nouns admit of multiple individuation schemas
which leads to overlap with respect to what counts as one in their
denotations. As a result: (i) fence, like cat, but unlike mud is
quantized at specific counting contexts (and so is grammatically count),
(ii) fence, like mud, but unlike cat is non-quantized at the null
counting context which make them felicitous in measure NPs.